


Just forget this ever happened

by andonewillbringhisfall



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 00:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12243153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andonewillbringhisfall/pseuds/andonewillbringhisfall
Summary: Baz discovers a spell that can erase people's memories, and gets kind of addicted to using it on Simon.





	Just forget this ever happened

**Author's Note:**

> UM YEAH SO this fic is basically my Legacy™ on Tumblr (even though I can't read it without cringing) so it's about time I post it on here. Have fun.
> 
> Also I should mention there is somewhat dubious consent, which is why *hi time for an edit* I'm changing the rating to M. There is nothing more explicit than kissing. More notes at the end on this topic.

BAZ:

The first time I used the memory spell was an accident.

It had been days since I’d had any blood, so I was already tired and grumpy when Snow found me in the woods. It was the middle of the night when all the creatures should have been out, and all I wanted was to drain a couple small animals and be back in our room within minutes, but Simon bloody Snow had to pick that night to drag himself out of bed just to follow me around. I could tell he was trying to be discreet about it, but he could barely take a single step without landing on a twig or a leaf or stumbling over his own clumsy feet, and I wasn’t the only one who heard him; he was scaring everything away and there wasn’t a single creature about.

Finally I gave up, stopping to hide behind a tree while I waited for him to catch up.

‘ **Stand your ground** ,’ I muttered, enjoying the look of shock on Snow’s face as he tried to take another step and found that he couldn’t lift his feet off the ground. The shock quickly turned to anger.

‘I know you’re there, Baz,’ he scowled.

‘What are you going to do about it, Snow?’ I sneered in response, and started walking away. I needed to get away from him.

‘ **Come out, come out, wherever you are**!’

Against their will, my feet turned back in his direction. I didn’t try to fight it. (I was distracted thinking of the irony in that I would not, in fact, come out to Simon Snow.)

‘You really don’t know how to unspell yourself from the ground?’ I asked when I was standing in front of him. ‘Pathetic.’

Snow huffed. ‘It’s not that I don’t know – it’s just – I wasn’t expecting –’

‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you followed me out here.’

He growled. ‘Look, if you would just unspell me –’

I pretended to consider it. ‘No, I think I’ll just leave you here and hope something with an appetite comes along during the night. Maybe I should call in another chimera. Or a snake; that would be more painful. Or would you prefer freezing to death? I could make it snow, wouldn’t that be entertaining – Snow buried in snow?’

‘Why do you have to be so evil, Baz?’ He might have stamped his foot if it wasn’t glued to the ground.

‘Quit whining. It’s very unattractive.’ Unlike everything else about him. My throat was parched and I could smell the magic steaming off his clothes like smoke and his cheeks and neck were flushed and I was so, so thirsty. I took a step back. I needed to go, before I did something stupid. (Like kiss him or bite him or kill him or all of the above.)

‘It was a genuine question,’ Snow said, his voice level. ‘I want to know why.’

‘Why, Snow?’ I snarled, glaring down at him. (Thank snakes I have those extra three inches.) ‘Do you really want to know? After you got up in the dead of night just to follow me out into the forest? Isn’t this what you wanted to find? You need me to be the villain, Snow. You wouldn’t have come here if this wasn’t what you wanted me to be.’

‘You purposely made me cry when I was an eleven-year-old orphan. Three times. In the first week. You were  _always_  evil, so it’s no excuse –’

‘It was no different back then!’ I burst out. If I had Snow’s power, I would have lit this forest on fire by then. ‘Your precious friends and everyone else and  _especially_  your fucking Mage – I was always the son of the tyrant ex-headmistress. And then you come along, Simon bloody Snow, the World’s Greatest Mage, and I’m forced to be your  _roommate_ , of all things. It hasn’t been fun for me either. Not to mention the part where –’

 _I’m hopelessly in love with you._  I almost said it out loud. The only thing that stopped me was that just at that moment, my spell wore off and Snow lurched forward, just stopping short of crashing into me.

He looked up at me, his gaze full of something that looked suspiciously like pity. But not the soft kind; it was the kind that said he was done with me.

‘We could have been friends,’ he said. ‘If you hadn’t been such a jerk to me, I wouldn’t have cared where you came from.’

I took a step back. All of the tiredness and the rush of emotions were building up in a dizzy peak between my eyes and I felt myself swaying slightly.

‘ **Just forget this ever happened** ,’ I hissed, and the words came out doused in magic. I watched Snow’s face turn blank, and I took the chance to disappear into the wood without looking back.

Hours later, I was fed and lying awake on my bed, regret churning in my stomach (or maybe it was just all the blood I’d drunk), when the door opened and Snow finally wandered in. Exhausted, he crumpled up in his own bed, and the next morning it was clear that he didn’t remember a thing.

 

***

 

The second time I used the spell, it wasn’t an accident.

I shouldn’t have done it. The memory I wanted to erase wasn’t important enough or painful enough that it should have been worth starting this whole thing. I thought it would just be the one time.

It was the first time Snow had ever managed to sneak up on me. I was visiting my mother’s grave in the Catacombs, and I didn’t notice his footsteps as he came nearer. Maybe it was because it had been weeks since the last time he followed me and I was starting to get used to it. More likely it was because it was my mother’s birthday and I wasn’t as vigilant as I should have been.

I can’t remember what I was saying to my dead mother’s bones. It could have been anything, because it was dark and I didn’t think anyone could see me. I’d brought new flowers for her, rather than just spelling the old ones back to life like I usually do, to mark the occasion.

And then Snow’s foot disturbed a rock or a bone or maybe he just tripped over his own feet and I realised he was watching me.

I hated him right then, with every fibre of my being. I hated him seeing me like this. At the same time, I wanted him to take me into his arms and hold me close. I wanted him to tell me everything was okay and that he was there for me, to comfort and care about me, and I hated that even more.

Without hesitating, I turned to him. ‘Just forget this ever happened.’

There was no magic this time. I could feel it tugging at me like it wanted to get out – it wanted to make the spell work – but something was missing. I knew immediately that I needed to be experiencing stronger emotions – more of that wild feeling of being on the edge of an explosion, and less of this slow burning resentment.

‘I – I’m sorry – I didn’t mean –’ Snow stuttered.

‘Just forget this ever happened!’ My wand was pointed straight at his face now, and the spell still wasn’t working. My frustration wasn’t enough to make it work.

He backed up, confusion on his face. ‘Is that a spell? Are you trying to spell me into forgetting?’

‘Yes,’ I growled, stepping closer. ‘Just forget this ever happened!’

Snow took another three steps back and hit the wall. He lifted his palms in a gesture of surrender. ‘Baz –’

The moron didn’t even think to pull out his wand to defend himself. His sword couldn’t defect my spell and he knew it, and without it he was useless.

‘Just forget this ever happened.’ I tried it one last time, and we were standing an arm’s length apart, and it still didn’t work.

I could see Snow’s shoulders relax as he realised I wasn’t going to be able to erase his memories. His gaze turned curious. I needed to do something – I needed to be feeling something more intense, something like what I imagined he felt before going off.

I didn’t let myself think it through. I grabbed Snow by the collar of his shirt and pulled him to me. As soon as my mouth was on his I knew I could do it – I could cast a whole song if I had to. Snow was warm, and I could feel his heart pounding under my fist, and Crowley, he was so alive. For that moment, I truly believed that I was alive too; I had to be, to be feeling this.

Snow finally shoved me away.

‘ **Just forget this ever happened** ,’ I cast, and ran as fast as I could.

 

SIMON:

Penny tried to convince me I had started sleepwalking.

‘The last thing you remembered was going to bed in your room, and the next thing you know you’re standing in the middle of the Wavering Wood. Then last night, exactly the same thing happens, and you find yourself in the Catacombs. You must’ve been sleepwalking. Maybe we should see if the nurse has any suggestions.’

‘But it doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘I don’t sleepwalk. And if I did sleepwalk, I wouldn’t go to the Catacombs. Only Baz goes there.’

‘And you. When you’re stalking him.’

‘Not the point. This must have something to do with him. I didn’t feel…  _normal_ … when I found myself down there last night, Penny.’

‘Then what did you feel?’

‘I’m not sure.’ I tried to put the feeling into words. ‘Flushed. Heady. I don’t know.’

She frowned. ‘Do you remember dreaming at all last night?’

‘No. At least, I don’t think so.’

But Penny wasn’t fazed. ‘I still think you should go to the nurse.’

‘And I still think this has something to do with Baz,’ I muttered, though I followed her to the infirmary anyway. ‘He’s plotting.’

 

BAZ:

I had kissed Simon Snow.

I couldn’t believe it. I kept replaying the moment over and over in my head, all the way back to our room, and then all that night (I pretended to be asleep when he found his way back, and then I went back to replaying the memory. I woke up drenched in sweat.) and then all the next day. And Snow, the twat, was completely oblivious. I spent hours dreaming about his hot breath on my skin, and he had no memory of it ever happening at all.

It was a new torture, one I hadn’t yet experienced in all my years of loving my enemy. Now I had something real to obsess over, more than just a glimpse of curls splayed out on a pillow or a scattering of moles disappearing underneath his shirt. I could erase Snow’s memory of the kiss but I couldn’t take back my own, and that meant I had to live with this ache of remembering something so intense, hot and toxic and exhilarating, and I could never experience it again.

I had never encountered the spell before but I always knew it had to be illegal. No-one had the right to take away a part of someone else’s life like that.

But I was weak, and I was selfish, so I let myself do it again.

When we were alone in our room, and he wouldn’t even look in my direction, hostility radiating off him in waves. I marched over to him and shoved him against the wall and brought my mouth down over his. I always closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the horror I was sure to find in his clear blue gaze. For a few heart-stopping moments my world would be brought into a sharp, blazing focus as if I’d been seeing in black and white all my life and only now discovered colour. Then I stumbled away from him and blurted out the spell as quickly as I could, my words tumbling over themselves so I was afraid it wouldn’t work and I’d have to cast it again, but I never did.

‘ **Just forget this ever happened**.’

I usually left the room before he could regain his bearings, so I wouldn’t have to make myself seem calm in front of him.

Only when I was out of sight did I let myself sink down against a wall, fingers pressed to my lips, guilt gnawing at my gut.

I was addicted.

 

SIMON:

I couldn’t remember why I was standing here at the end of my bed, my back to the wall, staring at the empty space across from me.

I couldn’t even remember walking here. One second ago I had walked in the room, and when I saw Baz, I had set my jaw and kept my stare firmly on my side of the room. And now I was here, and there was nothing in between. No steps, no thoughts.

I could have  _sworn_  Baz was here when I came in. But he wasn’t here now. I was alone in the room, though I did think I could sense a hint of cedar and bergamot, stronger than usual. As if I wasn’t losing my mind, and Baz really had been here when I came in. I glanced towards the bathroom, but there was silence.

Once I got over my confusion, and after the first few times it happened, I started noticing other things. I noticed that my heartrate had jumped considerably, and it wasn’t just because I worked myself up thinking about the irregularity. I noticed that my face was flushed and I had this strange tingling sensation like sparks crawling across my skin, almost like my magic except rushing at me from the outside rather than coming out of me, like I wasn’t the source of it.

It wasn’t just happening in the middle of the night anymore, so Penny dropped the sleepwalking suggestion.

‘Are you getting headaches?’ She felt my forehead to see if I was sick. ‘Maybe it’s the stress. Are you overworking yourself?’

I shook my head.

It kept happening, more and more regularly. And it only ever happened when I was alone, usually in my room (our room) but occasionally in the woods and once up on the ramparts.

I always thought I smelled cedar and bergamot, but Penny said I was probably just imagining it because I always blamed everything on Baz. (I had good reason to blame everything on Baz. Things usually turned out to be Baz’s fault.)

I started noticing other things, too, and I wasn’t sure whether I had missed them before or if they were new. One time my hair was completely dishevelled, even though I was indoors, alone, and the window was closed. Another time my hand suddenly started hurting as I realised I had been transported across the room again, and the next day I could see bruises forming across my knuckles. And every single time it happened I had that same flushed, breathless sensation, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why.

I was getting better at regaining my senses when it happened. I was on guard now, ready to catch the thing while it happened, waiting to see any evidence of being transported across a room, of being hit by some spell, of some explanation for what was happening.

One time I opened my eyes and saw a flash of long black hair just as the door slammed. I remembered stepping out of the bathroom; I didn’t remember walking over to the window, though that’s where I was now.

But I was sure of what I’d seen. Baz was doing this. I still didn’t know what ‘this’ was, but I knew he was up to something. Maybe he was slowly robbing me of my sanity, performing some evil spell on my brain until soon enough I’d be unable to function properly, let alone cast spells or save the World of Mages from his scheming family.

I had to stop this before it could go that far.

 

BAZ:

At first I would just kiss him and then erase the memory as quickly as I could. I would step away before Snow had a chance to react; before he could push me away and beat the shit out of me, before he even had time to register what had happened, so I could almost convince himself that rather than erasing a memory I was just stopping one from ever being formed.

But inevitably, I got swept away.

The first time I let things go on before pulling myself away from him was because… Snow didn’t let me.

I had him up against the wall, his shirt bunched up in my fist, mouths crushed together. I reached up with my other hand and buried it in his curls (they were soft and tangled and thick and I dreamed about them that night) and just as I told myself it was time to back off, I felt Snow’s hand on the back of my neck.

I expected him to yank me back and then punch me in the face. I let go of him and tried to push myself away before it could happen, but Snow’s hand held me firmly in place.

And then he moved his mouth back onto mine, and now  _he_  was the one kissing  _me_ , roughly, hungrily.

I don’t know how long I let him kiss me. I was too shocked to react. And I was feeling too… too  _much_ , too everything, all at once. And Snow kept kissing me.

Until finally he let go of me and stumbled away.

His eyes were wild. ‘I,’ he said, and swallowed. ‘I don’t know – I’m – I didn’t mean…’ He stuttered into silence, and then let his breath out all at once. ‘What the  _fuck_?’

I don’t know if he was asking me, or himself.

Maybe I should have left him with that memory. Maybe I should have tried to go on from there, to take that as a starting point and see where it led us. But where could it possibly lead us? For starters, I would have to explain why I’d kissed him, and I was fairly sure that once he thought it through, he’d regret his own reaction. No, kissing me was never a memory Snow was supposed to have, nor one he would want.

‘ **Just forget this ever happened** ,’ I whispered. I thought it might break my heart to say it now, but that ship had sailed a long time ago, the very minute I realised I loved him. Maybe even the moment we met.

 

SIMON:

‘It’s still happening, isn’t it?’ Penny asked, sitting down beside me at the breakfast table. ‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks, Pen. He’s messing with my mind, I just know it. Something is seriously wrong with me.’ I thunked my head down on the table. It was exhausting. I was starting to get seriously scared. Baz had always plotted against me, but he’d never gotten inside my head like this before, and I was terrified I could lose my mind at any moment. Lose all my memories, or suddenly forget how to talk, or collapse to the ground, my brain no longer functioning at all.

‘It’s something to do with your memory, isn’t it?’

‘I think so.’

It was the most logical conclusion. I just didn’t know what to do about it, or how to test it. How could I know if there was something I should be remembering if I’d forgotten it?

‘Okay. Here’s what you do,’ Penny said.

I perked up. Trust Penny to have a plan.

‘You need a watch. You have to make sure you always know exactly what minute it’s on, and then if it’s suddenly jumped forward a few minutes, we know you’ve lost a memory there somehow.’

‘Brilliant idea.’ Now all I needed to do was find someone who had a watch.

 

BAZ:

I should have stopped after the Snow-kissing-me-back incident, but I had to know if it would happen again.

It didn’t. The next time I kissed him, he pulled back immediately and punched me in the face.

‘What the fuck, Baz? What the fuck are you doing? Did you – did you just try to kiss me?’

‘ **Just forget this ever happened**.’

I went into the bathroom and used  **as you were**  on my face to make sure there would be no bruises in the morning.

 

SIMON:

7:13

I was sitting up on my bed, reading a book.

7:14

I looked up when Baz walked in. I snuck a glance at the watch hidden under my sleeve once he’d turned away.

7:15

I got up to use the bathroom. I thought about making a snide remark, because Baz’s presence was annoying me more than usual.

7:16

I was standing on Baz’s side of the room, facing the door. My heart was pounding, I was definitely blushing, and I could feel that tingling sensation again. Immediately I glanced down at the watch.

7:21

Ha! That settled it. Something had happened in the last five minutes, and now my memory of it was gone.

I heard the toilet flush in the bathroom, followed by water running in the sink. I frowned.

This still had to be Baz’s doing. He had been here before, so he must’ve been in the room when it happened, whatever it was. He was erasing my memory of whatever he had done, making me defenceless to prevent it. As far as I knew he could have cast some dark spell on me or altered some part of my magic, and as soon as I was faced with a battle I would fall apart. He could have hypnotised me into doing his evil bidding; who knew? It could be anything, and I would have no clue.

I didn’t bother waiting for him to come back in the room.

Penny was at least as good a mage as Baz. She would help me find a way to reverse whatever he was doing to me, and then I would remember everything.

 

BAZ:

He was gone when I came back out of the bathroom, my hair smoothed back into place, my face apathetic once again.

I was done. That was going to be the last time.

I lay on my bed and closed my eyes, listening for the footsteps that would tell me he was back to keep haunting me.

 

SIMON:

As soon as we started hunting for a reversing spell, the episodes stopped.

‘He probably knows we’re onto him,’ I told Penny while we perused the library shelves. ‘Or maybe he’s already finished doing what he meant to do,’ I added darkly. I still half-expected something to suddenly wake up in my brain that would allow Baz to take over my body and send me in to stab the Mage. That would be exactly the kind of evil thing he would do.

‘Be patient, Simon,’ Penny said. She returned the book she’d been flipping through onto the shelf.

We had tried every healing spell Penny could think of, but all they did was fade away the bruises on my knuckles (I still didn’t know how they got there. I hadn’t fought anything, not physically, in months. Maybe I had tried to defend myself at some point while my memory was being erased.)

Penny pointed at me with her ring. ‘ **As you were**.’ My tie re-tightened itself around my neck and I watched one of my shoelaces snake back into its knot. Penny shrugged. ‘It was worth a try.’

I pulled out my wand and stared at it. ‘I wish I could remember…’ I said, experimenting. I pointed the wand at my temple. ‘Forget-me-not… I can never remember… It’s all coming back to me…’ I shook my head and dropped my arm. ‘Nope. It’s not.’

‘We need to change tactics,’ Penny said. ‘Baz – well, probably-Baz – took something from you, and you want to get it back.’

I lifted the wand back to my head. ‘ **I’m taking back what’s rightfully mine.** ’ My eyes widened when I felt the magic take hold of the words.

‘Is something happening? Do you remember?’

I waited. There was something, just out of my reach, a niggling thought at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. Something about… Baz… fireworks…  _so much heat_ … and cold, at the same time, so cold, hands in my hair…

The memories came rushing back all at once.  _Kissing_. And Baz, his hands, his mouth, his hair slipping through my fingers.  _Aleister Crowley_ , I could remember everything so clearly now, the way I almost lost control of my magic every time it happened, because every time was like the first time. The shock that went through me when he touched me, the intensity of the kiss,  _Crowley, Baz was a good kisser (really, really good)_ , I remembered it now.

‘Well?’ Penny demanded, snapping me back to the present. My face was overheating again, and I felt like it was getting more difficult to breathe. ‘What happened? Simon?’

I remembered the spell Baz used on me. I remembered standing there shocked as he stepped away. ‘ **Just forget this ever happened.** ’ I remembered finding myself a few metres away from where I thought I’d just been standing, not knowing what had happened. I remembered the indignation after I’d realised what was happening –  _‘Is this what you’ve been doing? Kissing me and then erasing my –’_  He didn’t let me finish the sentence. I remembered kissing him back, figuring that as long as I held him he couldn’t cast any spells on me. I was going to pin him down on the bed and keep kissing him all night long if that was what it took.

‘Simon?’

‘Aleister Crowley,’ I mumbled. I remembered punching him in the face. ‘ _What the fuck?’_  It was an instinctive reaction – what else do you do when you find your mortal enemy suddenly making out with you? I remembered regretting it, just for a tiny instant (I wanted his mouth back on mine – how could I want that?) before I forgot it had ever happened.

‘What’s going on? What did he do?’

I took a deep breath, trying to slow down my heartbeat. ‘You won’t believe me if I tell you.’

I couldn’t even count the number of times it had happened. What was I supposed to do now? My brain was full of a thousand memories of a thousand different first kisses. I didn’t think I could forget a single one if I tried.

‘Try me,’ Penny said.

I leaned against the shelf and let myself slide down to the floor. ‘I think I need to sit down first.’

My head was full of lips and hands and tortured grey eyes and even just thinking about it, everything was on fire again.

 

BAZ:

Snow would never know what it was like. To feel like this. To walk around with those memories, always haunting me, taunting me with what I’d felt and what I could never have. Snow would never feel anything like this fire that was eating me alive.

 

SIMON:

I couldn’t get them out of my head.

Them? The memories? No.  _Him_. Baz.

Maybe, if I was just dealing with one stupendous kiss at a time, I could have led myself to believe that I wanted to punch him and knock him away from me and that I still hated him. But when all the memories came rushing back to overwhelm me like this, I couldn’t fight it.

I  _wanted_ Baz.

I’d never imagined I could  _feel_  that much.

I needed to feel that again. I was addicted.

 

BAZ:

The door flew open, and Snow looked dishevelled. I wasn’t sure what it was… it was… his face was flushed and his eyes were alight.  _Burning._  They sought me out as soon as he walked in the room.

 

SIMON:

It was the same thing I always felt when I saw Baz. My pulse speeding up. All my defences up, on guard, my senses on full alert. That feeling twisting its way into my chest, building itself up… now I knew what to do with it.

 

BAZ:

‘Baz, give me your wand.’

I sneered. ‘Excuse me?’ This was bold, even for Snow. To storm in here and demand that I give him my wand and somehow expect me to comply.

‘Give me your wand.’ He stopped in front of me and held out his hand. His eyes were blue fire.

 _‘_ No fucking way, Snow.  _Why_?’

I stood up. He pushed me back down onto the bed.

‘Fine.  _Fine._  But you can’t erase this, Baz – don’t you fucking dare touch my memory again. Okay?’

Shit, he’d figured it out. I should have been more careful. Just as long as he hadn’t actually gotten the memories back, I could survive.

‘ _Okay, Baz_?’ Snow insisted. ‘Promise me.’ His hands were still on my shoulders, and his face was hanging just above mine. I could have kissed him if I’d wanted to. But I wasn’t going to use the spell again. I would promise him.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Alright. I won’t.’

‘Good,’ he growled. I expected him to let me go, but he didn’t. His eyes were burning into me, and I was a vampire, for Crowley’s sake, I was  _flammable_. I felt myself leaning backwards, away from him, and he followed me.

‘Snow, what are you doing?’ I said weakly, still falling backwards. His hand moved up to support my head as I lay back, my head now hanging over the edge of the bed. ‘Simon…’

‘What am  _I_  doing?’ he repeated. I saw him close his eyes as he dipped his head and kissed me. And then I wasn’t seeing anything at all. ‘You’re such a hypocrite,’ he muttered, and kissed me again. I felt his words whisper across my jaw. ‘I got them all back.’ And again. ‘I remember everything.’

Simon Snow was lying on top of me and I could feel his heart pounding through the fabric of his shirt. He was so warm. I was so fragile; it felt like particles of dust fell away everywhere he touched me. He dug his hand into my hair. ‘Baz…’

I heard myself make a small sound. Snow’s lips pressed harder against mine in response.

‘What the fuck, Baz? Why’d you erase my memories?’ I forced myself to open my eyes, but when I searched his gaze, I didn’t see the anger I still expected. He looked at me the same way I only ever looked at him when I knew he was fast asleep. ‘And why did you kiss me? What’s up with that, huh?’ Even as he said it, he was moving his mouth back onto mine. It was hard to believe he might be feeling the exact same things I was feeling.

‘’Mm in love with you,’ I mumbled. I wasn’t sure if he heard me. I was in too much bliss to particularly care.

 

SIMON:

I had been right all along; Baz was messing with my mind.

I found I quite liked it.

(I did hear what he said to me, but I chose to ignore it. I just wanted to keep kissing him. Baz probably thought I didn’t know, because I never mentioned it. I decided it was a memory I would keep just for myself.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading. Now time for a debrief. Basically, the lack of consent in this fic has been bothering me for a long time (and someone very politely pointed it out recently) which is why I'm adding this note. 
> 
> This story plays into the context of hundreds of other fanfics whose sole purpose is to bring these two characters together. The reader (and me when I was writing it ages ago) goes into the story knowing that Simon and Baz are guaranteed to end up together and that ultimately, no matter what, they will love each other and want to be together, which I think is why *in this context* a story like this can seem pretty harmless. But if this story was real life, there would be no such guarantee, so kissing someone without their consent - especially repeatedly and in a way that they become powerless to stop it - would be totally unacceptable behaviour. (And totally OOC - Baz wouldn't do it.)
> 
> Hopefully I did an OK job at explaining what I mean there and you understand how I can be not OK with this, but still leave the fic up. In any case, I have never written and will never write another fic like this.


End file.
